Passenger vehicles play a much smaller role in the battle to decrease ground ozone levels in the Front Range than one might think given the mandate that every car and light truck in the metro area pass biennial emissions tests.

Given that older cars will continue to find their way to the scrap yard, it’s reasonable to expect that in the near and extended future fighting ground ozone by targeting cars will be a less and less useful activity.

And by the way, cars built in 1996 and later actually know when they are polluting and they don’t keep the information a secret from you or your mechanic. Ever notice that “Check Engine” light?

CDPHE’s required annual reports over the last few years have effectively inflated the apparent failure rate by as much as 25 percent.

The fact confounds some policy-makers, as you’ll see if you read tomorrow’s story.

The department also has opted to reject a state law passed in 2006 meant to shutter brick-and-mortar emissions centers and switch to a program that uses on-road sensors that can test passenger vehicles as they simply drive by.

So readers should forgive your Lookout Colorado correspondent for seeking out this low-hanging fruit.

But guess what? Outgoing Gov. Bill Ritter didn’t do it.

A records request shows that the Democrat’s cabinet members didn’t get any extras for all of 2010, nor for January and February of 2011, when you might expect post-inaugural goodies to appear on the books.

While the identity of its writers and backers remains a mystery, this much is clear, the new conservative political website Colorado Peak Politics hopes to counter the forces over at the liberal Colorado Pols.

Tipsters and sources intrigued by your Lookout Colorado correspondent’s Peak post yesterday say the new site’s tongue-in-cheek response to questions about its goals and funding don’t quite capture the scope of its ambition.

Peak told me it has a staff of two “unruly and well-versed conservatives,” but sources with a better understanding of the site add that the writers are guided by an experienced conservative politico who hopes to create the same kind of insider culture enjoyed by the veteran Pols apparatus.

So each day, as left-minded elected officials and staffers under the Gold Dome feed information to Pols wordsmiths, a right-minded effort hopes to rise up in contrast at Peak.

“I absolutely get that take, and I applaud them for it,” said Todd Shepherd, the founder and co-owner of Complete Colorado. “Quite frankly, it’s overdue.”

As a member of the mainstream media, I’ve learned to become accustomed to the elusive nature of the political blogger.

Many enjoy anonymity. Others work with an open identity, but conceal who pays their bills.

Though it filed its first post on the opening day of the current legislative session, the newcomer conservative website Colorado Peak Politics has only recently landed on the radar for some among the political junkie intelligentsia.

When fully up to speed later this year, the new state office dedicated to enforcement of medical marijuana laws for the industry will staff enough investigators to rival the field staff at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

The burgeoning new Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division — born on July 1, 2010 — is a rarity among government programs in these prolonged tight budgetary times in that it is hiring at all.

The division hopes to soon staff 27 investigators, up from the five it has now.

CBI presently staffs 34 field investigators, and its officials have been begging for years for two to three more sleuths at what it says is a woefully understaffed office in Grand Junction.

“People are working like crazy,” says the bureau’s spokesman, Lance Clem. “Their plate is full.”

To take up the slack, officers from Denver routinely drive across the state to help staff the office.

Clem adds that it is not lost on those trying to solve tough cases like homicide and fraud that they feel understaffed while the new medical marijuana division rakes in the cash to monitor an industry in violation of federal law.

The letter provides the section of statute Dawes cites in denying a fuller response under CORA. The link includes summary information for every board member and executive staff member and breaks out the total travel in aggregate year by year from 2006 through 2010.

A warning, the PDF is difficult to read if you don’t print it out. Also, I’ve done a little reporting to help make sense of the current board members in order to provide their day jobs:

He’s been working on the piece for more than a year, and discovered that as many as 25 sex offenders could be living in or near the taxpayer-subsidized facilities.

Beyond his findings, which I’ll not poach here (so click on the link and read them there), I find another aspect of this story compelling.

Shepherd’s journey toward publication broke from the expected. He’s put it up unfinished.

After a geo-coding expert did the work of matching a database of the addresses of registered sex offenders with a database containing the more than 4,000 addresses of those who provide child care for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, Shepherd intended to confirm – address by address – what was actually going on.

Instead, he’s published an incomplete report, declined to name names, and turned over his findings to Human Services.

“I wanted to go out and check with shoe leather,” Shepherd told me. “There was just this one house and it scared the hell out of us.”

Chuck is The Denver Post's political investigative reporter. He has been a professional journalist for more than 15 years, several of them doing investigative reporting. He covered Denver's preparation for the Democratic National Convention as the paper's lead convention writer and also covered the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. He most recently served on The Post's editorial board.